Wednesday, July 25, 2007

Media Ignored Previous Larry Flynt Bombshell; Will It Cover His New Revelations?

By MARC McDONALD

Love him or hate him, you've gotta admit, Larry Flynt is one smart man. Like a lot of us, he's sick and tired of Republican hypocrisy. And he knows that the mainstream media is pathologically incapable of ignoring a story that involves sex.

One gets the feeling, though, that the mainstream media just wishes Flynt would go away. There are already indications that the MSM isn't prepared to investigate Flynt's sex scandal leads. For example, on July 10, as Media Matters reported, neither NBC Nightly News and CBS Evening News reported on the disclosure that Sen. David Vitter's (R-LA) phone number was among the phone records of alleged "D.C. Madam" Deborah Jeane Palfrey.

The Vitter case has gotten heavy play in the progressive blogosphere. But it remains to be seen if the MSM will investigate this story and give it the coverage it deserves.

In any case, this isn't the first time that the MSM has downplayed or ignored bombshells that resulted from Flynt's investigative efforts.

For example, in 2000, Flynt tried to encourage the media to examine a bombshell story that, in 1971, George W. Bush got his then-girlfriend, a woman named Robin Lowman (now Robin Garner) pregnant and then arranged for her to have an abortion. (Note that in 1971, abortions were illegal in Texas).

But, predictably, Flynt got nowhere. The same mainstream media that gave us 18 months of around-the-clock, saturation coverage of the Monica Lewinsky story, refused to touch the Bush/abortion story.

It's downright eerie and Orwellian, the way the Bush/abortion story has been consistently ignored and even covered up by our nation's media. Few Americans have even heard of this story to this day.

One interesting episode on CNN a few years back neatly sums the media's approach to this story. On November 7, 2000, Flynt briefly spoke about the Bush/abortion case during an appearance on CNN's "Crossfire." Bizarrely, CNN later deleted Flynt's comments from the show's official transcripts, in an unprecedented move that indicates that the media in this country have received orders from their corporate owners to not touch this story.

"The mainstream media is scared to death of this story. They won't even check out the facts that I already have, much less ask Bush the question."

The mainstream media snoozed through this story during the 2000 election. And I suppose there's little reason that the media will look into it now.

It's true: the Bush/abortion story was never confirmed. But the lack of confirmation on a story never stopped the MSM from giving widespread coverage to stories when they involved Bill Clinton. Recall how in March 1998, the MSM gave saturation coverage to the Paula Jones case. (Time magazine even put the story on its cover).

It remains to be seen if the MSM will investigate Flynt's latest bombshell story. But on the basis of the MSM's track record in the Bush era, the odds are not good.

In fact, since Bush first took office, the nation's media has fallen into an eerie slumber. From GannonGate to PlameGate to the Downing Street memos, the media has snoozed through one major GOP scandal after another.

re:>>>Any newsroom has to calculate>>>the best they can whether an>>>item is news, how much people>>> are going to care.

Yes, well the MSM has been doing a sh*tty job of deciding "what's news" now for the past couple of decades.They tried, desperately to convince the American people that Clinton's blow job was important news.The American people yawned and continued to give Clinton an approval rating in the high 60s.Oh, and the public also increasingly simply stopped buying a daily newspaper.Newspapers have seen a steady drop in circulation for decades. And the MSM's news broadcasts' ratings have also been declining.People are simply no longer believing the MSM's b*llshit and are turning to independent voices on the Web, thank God.

re:>>>Why wait for someone to spend>>>resources digging for>>>confirmation that Bush 43 had a>>> different view on abortion>>> when he was 25 years old?

Yes, well it's certainly obvious that YOU don't have a f*cking clue as to what makes a news story.This was a very important story in the run-up to the 2000 election. Bush was trumpeting his anti-abortion, anti-Roe V. Wade views and courting the religious right.If Bush indeed had knocked up his girlfriend and secured an abortion for her, this was an important story that the MSM should have investigated. The American people have the right to know if the candidate they're voting for is a hypocrite and a liar.Had the American people known this at the time, maybe the Chimp wouldn't have gotten into office, and we could've been spared the horrors of the past 6 years.

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About This Blog

Welcome to BeggarsCanBeChoosers.com, the progressive political blog of Marc McDonald. A Texas journalist, McDonald worked for 15 years for several newspapers, including the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, before he quit his day job and set up shop in cyberspace in 1995. McDonald's articles have appeared in a number of popular progressive Web sites, including Crooks and Liars, The Reaction, Buzzflash.com, Salon.com, OpEdNews.com, The Neil Rogers Show and The Raw Story. McDonald's Web articles have also been featured and reviewed by various national and international media, including CNN Headline News, the BBC, CBS, the Washington Post, USA Today and many more. On June 3, 2011, I was interviewed on the progressive radio program, "Voices at Work." Go here to hear my interview with host Ron Gonyea. I am always available for media interviews on progressive issues. Contact me here.